In many environments, such as hospitals, laboratories, clean rooms, crime scenes, computer rooms and homes, it is useful to minimize or eliminate contaminants introduced on the soles of the shoes of people entering the environments. To address this need, it is known to place a cover over each shoe before entering these environments, thereby minimizing the transfer of contaminants. Sterile environments, including hospitals and clean rooms, often require the use of shoe covers as standard operating procedure to maintain the requisite level of cleanliness. There are numerous non-sterile environments that also would benefit from the use of shoe covers, including homes, museums, and beauty salons. High-volume use of shoe covers in these non-sterile environments, however, has been hampered by lack of convenience. The time necessary to hand-place a cover on each shoe has been an obstacle to widespread use of shoe covers, despite their clear benefits.